Excel Formula: Remove extension from file name
Here is a list of file names including the extensions, how can you remove the extensions from the file names as below screenshot shown. In this tutorial, it provides a formula to deal with this job, and explains the arguments of the formula and how the formula works in Excel.
Generic formula:
| =LEFT(filename,FIND(".",filename)-1) |
Arguments
| Filename: the text string you want to remove the extension from. |
Return value
The formula returns the cell contents without extension.
How this formula work
Example: To remove the extension from file names in column B3:B5, please use below formula in C3:C5.
| =LEFT(B3,FIND(".",B3)-1) |
Press Enter keys to get the result in C3, then drag fill handle down to C5.
Explanation
FIND(".",B3): the FIND function returns the position of a specific character. Here this formula gets the position of character “.”.
=LEFT(B3,FIND(".",B3)-1): the LEFT function extracts text from left side of a text string. Here this formula calculation steps will be shown as below:
=LEFT(B3,FIND(".",B3)-1)
=LEFT(B3,6-1)
=LEFT(B3,5)
Which returns five characters in left side of the text string in cell B3.
Remark
If there are two or more file names with extensions in a cell, this formula only returns the first file name. See screenshot:
Sample File
Click to download sample fileRelative Formulas
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